


Seeing Things

by KittyViolet



Category: New Mutants (Comics), X-Men (Comicverse)
Genre: Domestic Fluff, F/F, Sickfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-09
Updated: 2020-04-09
Packaged: 2021-03-02 00:09:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,201
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23555854
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KittyViolet/pseuds/KittyViolet
Summary: If only Illyana could scry inside her own body, she'd know exactly how to fix it.
Relationships: Kitty Pryde/Illyana Rasputin
Comments: 2
Kudos: 13





	Seeing Things

**Author's Note:**

> Compatible with the Days of Future Middle-Age series, in which Kate and Illyana are married and teaching at a school for mutants, which might or might not be on Krakoa.

“You don’t look great,” said Kate. Usually Illyana does look great, even when she’s just returned from Limbo; even when she’s been there on what she likes to call routine maintenance, which could mean casting a spell to unclog a pipe so ichor could flow freely to the absinthe sea, or hacking a ten-limbed monstrosity into bits too small to be dangerous till they re-grew in a thousand years. The monstrosity smelled like cabbage and spoiled yogurt, and when she came back, Illyana had too. 

That was her worst return from routine maintenance for a while, till now. Her bangs are sweaty, her forehead’s pinker than it should be, and the sweat on her muscular forearms isn’t just from exertion; she’s got a fever, and probably a cough. “I saved a whole planet—hack!—of sentient crayfish from Volvo-sized cockroaches,” Illyana says, carefully doffing her spiked shoulder armor, “and now I need to lie down.”

“You’ve got the flu,” Kate says. “Or something worse than the flu. I’ll get Josh Foley if I can find him.” But the resurrected mutant healer, Kate finds when she checks her xPhone, is nowhere to be found: nowhere on Krakoa, nowhere in the rebuilt mansion that houses the school and the teachers (the experiment in collective education in Quonset huts having gone sideways years ago), just nowhere. 

“Maybe the Morlock healer? The guy with the bandages on his hands?” But he’s not even living on the island.

“Sit down,” Kate says, “I’ll go look. I’ll make you tea.” Illyana hacks a few more times while taking off her breastplate and her boots—Kate loves those boots as she loves the feet in them, and the tail behind them. Then Illyana leans forward to watch Kate leave the room. The look on her face says: I love that you can take care of me but I wish I could take care of myself.

When the American mutant comes back, the Russian is already flat on her back, at least until she props herself up, expelling another cough like a gunshot. Kate phases for self-protection then puts on a mask. “I talked to Ororo—she and Trevor are in the parlor doing weather-prediction stuff; have you seen the way Trevor reads a map? We’re just going to keep you as comfortable as we can till Josh gets back from Chile tomorrow. I guess it’s the Limbo flu?”

Illyana shrugs. “I guess. I started coughing while I was still hip-deep in the river of toxic lentils, and I couldn’t really take my own temperature or cast a healing spell on myself—which is always way less effective than healing someone else, by the way, because you can’t really scry inside your own body. So I decided to just come home.”

The kettle boils. Kate gives the love of her life an intangible hug, then a tangible one, then shuts the door to their bedroom and pours the hot water. “Black tea with rose petals OK?”

“Mmmmm.” Magik sits up just enough to drink the tea, lifting the glass-handled mug with her tail. “Cinnamon and blood. My favorite.”

“You’re making fun of me.”

“Like you haven’t enjoyed a black pudding.”

Kate blushes. They’re not kosher but they are delicious; she ate her fill of them in Scotland.

The next morning Kate’s watching Illyana sleep, which is one of her favorite things to do; often it’s sexy but right now it’s just about romantic love and loyalty and mild concern. She’s coughing in her sleep but not much. She burps, once. Kate thinks it’s cute. She places a thin, soft layer of black linen, Illyana’s favorite top sheet, over her lover before she gets up out of bed. She’s not going to leave the bedroom until she gets a mutant healer in, or a medical all-clear. Fortunately Forge built a silent coffee grinder, so Kate can have coffee ready for when Illyana wakes up, and save the tea for evening.

Then Kate’s xPhone bleeps and someone’s calling her using Cerebro and someone’s banging hard on the wooden door. She phases her head blearily through the open door and finds Eye-Boy.

“Trevor?” she manages to say while phased.

“Can I come in?”

“There’s a quarantine and she might be shedding Limbo virus and she’s sleeping and you’re not dating her, so no, Trevor, what the fuck. Is there an emergency that requires you to look at her from close up, rather than just staring through the door, which I know your powers let you do?” That was probably excessive, but Kate hasn’t had any coffee yet, and there’s nothing like knowing your lover’s unwell to make you irritable in the morning. Or at any other time.

“Captain Red Queen Professor Shadowcat, I’m sorry, but I wouldn’t say that to you if you noticed bad malware on my laptop, and this situation is rather like that. I can literally see things you can’t, and I can help your wife if you let me in.” Trevor’s staring at her with both the eyes under his eyebrows while the eye on his shoulder blinks lazily and both eyes on his neck look around. Kate’s almost used to that by now.

She retreats back through the door, turns solid, and opens it. Illyana notices the feel of an unfamiliar person in the bedroom, wakes up immediately, and reaches for the nearest weapon, which turns out to be a bedpost. Kate places her hand on top of Illyana’s before she can snap it off. 

“It’s OK, Ilya,” Kate says. “Trevor says he sees something that can make you feel better. And he isn’t exactly Loki; I trust him.”

The eye-covered mutant unbuttons his shirt to reveal nothing but ribs, thin blond chest hair, and half a dozen eyes underneath. “The one all the way to the left sees X-rays,” Trevor says, “and the one above that works kind of like an MRI, but without the noise, and that other one down there-- I'm sorry, that's just where it's located-- sees magic waves. You don’t have a virus, or if you do that’s not the problem. You just have invasive demons.”

Illyana smiles. “Where, exactly?”

Trevor’s ribcage eyes all squint before he speaks. “One in your trachea and one in your sinuses. It has… five horns and it’s shaped like a stack of lentils?”

“Of course. The corrupted lentil bug. I shoud have worn a mask. They can get up your nose.”

Kate is rolling up her blue pajama sleeve. “Shall I?”

“Go ahead.” She phases only her arm and reaches into Illyana’s nose, then into her cheek, and slowly withdraws her hand and arm, holding a thin stack of what indeed look like lentils with horns, breathing foul smoke and flailing their threaded tails.

Illyana smiles. “I’ll take it from here. Fquith asyart hfgjuimz!” she pronounces, and the bugs burst into flames, then turn to a spume of white ash. 

Kate can tell she’s feeling better already. “Thank you, Trevor. Do you have a seder to go to?”

“How did you know I was Jewish?” he says.

“Oh, I can see things.” 

Illyana, accepting the day’s first cup of coffee, already no longer feverish, snorts flames.


End file.
